Comic Book / Adventure Time Graphic Novels

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A series of graphic novels based on the cartoon Adventure Time. Danielle Corsetto wrote volumes 1, 2, and 5. Kate Leth wrote volumes 3, 4, and 6. Volume 7, 8, and 9 were written by Josh Trujillo. The first four novels have art by Zach Sterling. Volumes 5 and 6 have art by Bridget Underwood and Jenna Ayoub. Volume 7 has art by Sterling and Phil Murphy, and volume 8 by Murphy alone. Volume 9 has art by Sterling, Ayoub, and Murphy. Volume 10 was written by Ashly Burch with art by Diigii Daguna, and had a back-up short by Marina Julia. Volumes 11 and 12 were written by Jeremy Sorese, known for his graphic novel Curveball and work on Steven Universe comics, with art by Sterling. The first six books include backup shorts written and drawn by Meredith McClaren. The volumes are as follows:

Volume 1: Playing With Fire: (June 2013) Finn and Jake take Flame Princess to the Carnival Kingdom, where a fortune-telling Dragon steals Finn's soul (Literally), forcing Flame Princess to traverse a puzzle filled dungeon to get him back. The volume also contains a short, silent story featuring BMO playing around with Finn and Jake's weapons.

Volume 2: Pixel Princesses: (December 2013) Lumpy Space Princess hosts a Princess party, but when things don't go as planned, she wonders if she should even be a princess, going so far as to throw away her gem. Outside, BMO is passing by the area and, wanting to go to the party, wishes "he could know what it's like to be a princess inside". Magic Man, hearing this and bored, grants his wish and transports LSP and her guests (Muscle Princess, Breakfast Princess, Embryo Princes, Turtle Princess, and Skeleton Princess) into BMO. The only way out is to beat the games within BMO, but can the princesses work together to do so? There's also a short dialogue-less story that focuses on Gunther.

Volume 3: Seeing Red: (March 2014) Jake goes to visit Marceline after she calls Finn and him over (Finn is off doing errands). She explains that she's going to the Nightosphere for a family reunion as well as to retrieve her axe bass, which she left behind on her last visit. However once she gets home, Marcie finds that her father sold the guitar. Needing it to use in the family's talent show, Marcie and Jake head out to track it down. There's also a short story featuring Lumpy Space Princess and her quest for a purse.

Volume 4: Bitter Sweets: (November 2014) Princess Bubblegum makes a journey to the outer kingdoms to recharge the magic gems that power the Candy Kingdom. While the previous books were black-and-white, this one was printed in color. The back-up short involves Jungle Princess and a magic fox.

Volume 5: Graybles Schmaybles: (April 2015) Finn and Jake wake up after hearing their names called, and find a little cube that can project a screen, which shows them images of an enigmatic thief plaguing their friends. The back-up short has BMO cooking.

Volume 6: Masked Mayhem: (December 2015) On Ooo's Masquerade Day, Jake and BMO investigate a series of prank attacks on parties. The back-up short follows a week in the life of Starchy, as the Candy Kingdom's janitor.

Volume 7: The Four Castles: (May 2016) Finn and Jake are challenged to retrieve four magic artifacts and prove their worthiness to join a mysterious Heroes' Guild of the Manyverse.

Volume 8: President Bubblegum: (November 2016) The legendary Constitution of Ooo is rediscovered and reveals the land to be a presidential democracy. Election time!

Volume 9: Brain Robbers: (January 2017) Lumpy Space Princess persuades Tree Trunks to help her in a plan to steal treasure from the evil Zombie Twins. But when Finn and Jake pursue them in the hope of protecting Tree Trunks, Finn's brain is stolen!

Volume 10: Islands: (March 2017) Set thousands of years before the main franchise, this is an Interquel between the "Stakes" and "Islands" TV multi-episode arcs. A young girl named Jo, or Bunny Girl, who was once protected by Marceline, takes part in an exodus of humans across the seas to escape the vampires who have taken over the main continent of Ooo. The back-up story, set in the present, has BMO advising the reader on how to take care of goldfish.

Volume 11: The Ooorient Express: (June 2017) Jake takes a train in search of a cure for the sick Lady, but violent events break out on board the train itself.

Volume 12: Princess and Princess: (February 2018) Finn is persuaded to temporary become a Princess, when Rock Princess temporarily leaves her kingdom to find herself.

The graphic novels have the following tropes.

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Vol 1: Playing With Fire

Berserk Button: Bringing up her childhood or calling her "sweetheart" are ones for Flame Princess

Flame Princess mentions her and Finn's dungeon adventure from "Vault of Bones"

Choose Goose shows up in the dungeon as part of one of the puzzles.

Flame King tries once again to convince his daughter to turn his daughter back to evil.

Cutting the Knot: Deconstructed. Flame Princess does this after getting fed up with the first Puzzle in the Dragon's Puzzle Dungeon and proceeds to blast her way through the dungeon until she ends up in a chamber with a waterfall. Jake then proceeds to point out that blasting your way out of a puzzle only creates a series of endless puzzle rooms until you take the time to solve one properly.

Good Feels Good: Helping Finn return all the people the Dragon kidnapped to their homes not only makes Flame Princess realize just why Finn does what he does, but also makes her hope she can be good in the future.

The Load: Soulless Finn. He cares about nothing and is too lazy to do much of anything, considering doing anything at all too much effort.

No Fair Cheating: Called out on Flame Princess by Jake as her solution to everything is using fire. Eventually she comes across portions of the dungeon her powers can't solve and ultimately has to learn to play by the rules if she wishes to save Finn.

Stock Video Game Puzzle:An inverted version of the Lock and Key puzzle is used, paired with a riddle. Flame Princess is given the key from the getgo, but has to find the right lock for it. As it turns out the lock isn't any of the ones she's presented with, but one on the back of Choose Goose's head.

Too Dumb to Live: When Flame Princess and Jake get to a cave with water inside, Jake tells Flame Princess to wait on the surface so he can solve the underwater puzzle. But an impatient Flame Princess refuses to take orders from Jake so she (who's made out of FIRE) jumps in the water and nearly dies. She would have been dead if she had not "willed" herself to the fire kingdom.

What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: The dragon turns out to have kidnapped peoples' souls and placed them in cells that can only be opened by love, because it couldn't feel love itself and wanted to experience it via empathy.

Vol 2: Pixel Princesses

Alpha Bitch: Before Princess Day, this comic was the main showcase of Breakfast Princess's attitude. Needless to say it doesn't help the princesses' situation.

Blunt "Yes": When BMO asks if it's true he can't be a princess, Breakfast Princess answers with this.

Button Mashing: Turtle Princess when she's forced to play a sky pilot game and is told to just hit everything to win. BMO's encouragement helps.

The Friend Nobody Likes: LSP forces the other princesses to admit that Turtle Princess was the only one who actually wanted to come to her party.

Gory Discretion Shot: When the others can't bear to bring themselves to kill the cute animals in order to proceed. Skeleton Princess offers to do it as she is "dead inside". We see the others' reactions as she cuts the animals up with a sword.

Heroic B.S.O.D.: LSP gets this when Breakfast Princess blows up at her for nearly getting them killed or rushing ahead without them. It takes some words from BMO to snap her out of it.

Hidden Depths: LSP turns out to be a wiz at geometric puzzle games, which ends up saving the others in the final level.

Ninja Maid: The princesses first find themselves in a Donkey Kong clone where the Donkey Kong equivalent is a giant Ninja Maid.

Race Against the Clock: BMO suggests that the princesses must escape by the time his battery runs down or else they might die. Subverted since it turns out she was just messing with them, and plugged himself into a power socket.

Rhetorical Request Blunder: BMO expresses a desire to know what it's like to be a princess inside. Unfortunately, Magic Man is camping nearby.

Squick: The in-universe reaction of the others when LSP pushes the star back into her head without bothering to brush the mud and twigs off it.

To Be Lawful or Good: Embryo Princess guilt-trips the frog into ignoring game logic and just giving her the right item out of three.

Win to Exit: The only way out of BMO is to beat the games and save the princesses (i.e themselves).

Your Head A-Splode: Breakfast Princess manages to beat one of the levels this way by making pancakes for a group of warriors that were attacking them. They chow down on them and their heads explode because they're just that good.

Did They or Didn't They?: Jake's farewell to the bellhop at the hotel can be interpreted as either trying to explain why Jake can't do anything with him, or trying to explain that it was just a one-night stand.

It's the Journey That Counts: Parodied in Lumpy Space Princess's back-up story, where she quests for the world's coolest handbag, only to find out at the end that the handbag was never real and she was meant to realise that she didn't need it to be cool. She angrily insists that she knows she's cool, but she wanted the handbag to impress people without having to make an effort.

Mistaken for Gay: Jake arrives at the punk club in a black leather jacket, shades and a moustache, and it's implied that he thinks that the bouncer called him a "Scream Queen" after mistaking him for a gay Leather Man. Marceline subsequently jokes that she told the bouncer he was a hairdresser.

Opening Shout-Out: The first panels◊, in which we see through Jake's eyes as he surprises Marceline and she snarls at him in shock, replicate Marcie's appearance in the opening sequence of the TV show.

Poor Communication Kills: Hunson as usual. Turns out he sold the guitar in secret because he wanted to give Marcie a new one as a surprise gift. While touched by the gesture, she refuses because the original axe was so emotionally important to both of them, as the magic weapon he used to take over the Nightosphere and them turned into a musical instrument for his daughter. That said, Marcie forgives him and the two jam out on both guitars for the talent show.

Costume-Test Montage: Jake tries out various fancy-dress costumes on BMO before settling on a "detective" one.

Dresses the Same: Subverted when LSP and Melissa coincidentally wear identical fancy dress costumes, but don't get angry about it.

Dude, Not Funny!: Jake's in-universe reaction when Marceline scares him with a cardboard cut-out of the Lich.

Everybody Did It: All the on-page prank attacks were unconnected, and one wasn't even malicious. When Princess Bubblegum challenges the people of Ooo to find out if any of them weren't pranking that day, Mr. Pig is the only one who turns out to be innocent.

Baddie Flattery: The Guildmaster ends up complementing BMO for their heroism, although she then throws in a verbal jab at the end.

Continuity Nod: The villains who the Guildmaster invites to party at the Tree Fort include the King of Ooo, the evil Tree Witch from "To Cut A Woman's Hair", and the Squeeze-E-Mart employee from "One Last Job".

Downer Ending: Finn and Jake end up doing hard labor in a Candy Kingdom prison for robbery.

Dracolich: An undead dragon owns the magic earring, and turns out to be a friend of Skeleton Princess and not actually evil.

Walking Spoiler: The explanation for all the spoiler code in this section - the Guildmaster is evil.

What the Hell, Hero?: Finn and Jake get progressively more extreme versions of this from various characters as they rob artifacts from people.

Vol. 8: President Bubblegum

Achilles in His Tent: PB initially refrains from running as president, seeking a quiet life, until things get so bad that Peppermint Butler runs.

Bait-and-Switch: The initial captions suggest that the duo exploring a dungeon are Finn and Jake as usual, but it's then revealed to be the King of Ooo and Toronto.

Booby Trap: BMO as returning officer realised that Toronto would try to steal a ballot box, and put a bomb in it.

Call-Back: The King of Ooo is seeking revenge on Princess Bubblegum following the events of the TV episode "The Dark Cloud", having seemingly regained his normal shape and stature.

Democracy Is Flawed: PB discovers that as President she's held responsible for everyone but nobody is willing to help her. She gets a final speech about how even though she's ruling as Princess again everyone has to pull together to solve problems.

Dressed in Layers: PB rips her princess dress off Superman-style to reveal the rainbow-coloured business suit she wears as President of Ooo.

Eldritch Abomination: The activation of the Constitoootion creates one known as the Shadow President.

Demonic Possession: The guard and the other train staff are possessed by spider-demons and transform into them when the train needs them as servants.

Detective Mole: The guard who initially investigates the murders is actually the leader of the train's servants.

Dramatic Pause: Parodied when Jake pauses so long when he's worried that the train might be haunted that he's already on board when he's finished the sentence.

Getting Crap Past the Radar: The whole novel is in one aspect a joke about the notorious refusal to allow the word "murder" to be used on the show on taste-and-decency grounds. The title demands the addition of "Murder On...", and various individuals use transparent mumbled versions of it throughout.

Holy Burns Evil: The Salesman's potions corrode the fabric of the train like Hollywood Acid not because they're poisonous, but because they are good magic and it is saturated by evil.

Obviously Evil: The evil train has a skull front and a ribcage around its boiler.

Police Are Useless: The two cops who board the train have no idea what to do in the face of supernatural evil.

Red Herring: The Salesman initially appears villainous, but is actually a good guy.

Sneeze of Doom: Princess Bubblegum is blasted out of the hospital ward by Lady's sneeze.

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